Welcome Menno Liebregts to the Tech Caddie podcast. Menno, how are you today? Thanks, Mike. I'm fine. I'm just fine. Thank you. All the way from the Netherlands and Europe, all across the water and the other side of the world almost. Yeah. That's right. That's right. But, you know, we know that golf is growing not only in North America, but worldwide. And so we've wanted to have more guests on outside of North America. And so you've been kind enough to do that for us.

Your company is Golfspot and essentially you are aggregating data, specifically golfer data or customer data from many different systems and platforms, bringing them together, making that data frankly usable. There's so much data out there that is hard to use. So why don't you introduce your company a little bit to us and then we'll...

go through your journey and learn how your customers use Golfspot today. Sure, sure. So Golfspot, like what you said, is a single point of rule of customer data. So what we see is a growing number of applications and golf organizations need to use. In the past, it was simple. You play 18 holes or you don't play 18 holes. That's it. You became a member or not a member.

That's changing in the last 20 years, at least in Europe, but I guess it's the same in the USA. So different kinds of memberships you have, you have different kinds of booking reservations, policies for different kinds of player types, all kinds of things that's growing and became different. So we see legacy systems out there in many countries. Many countries have one, two systems that are already there for 20, 25 years.

But to replace them, because that's sometimes the need to replace a system, is that if you want to replace it, you cannot build that as we call it an all -one solution. So the all -one solution offers all functionalities and all organizations want to use, like membership management, invoicing, reservations, tournaments, et cetera, et cetera. And there are now more product specialists on the market that

does the same thing only on one feature like the Genius does on the event software like Lightspeed and Teecontrol does on the tee sheet side of things. And more and more systems are used and more and more connections need to be built and it was in what we saw two years ago no one who was delivering a solution for that problem that you need to have at least

the single point of customer data that connects all the systems. So all systems also have the same customer data and not making Excel files, putting all customer data and all decisions with Excel files. Because when you have an Excel file and you put it in a system, it's already outdated. If you change in the field, it's not going to change in all the systems that you use. So that's the main thing what we saw. That's right. That's right. So.

You mentioned two years and you already did mention the word problem, which I think is so key to so many startups, right? You've got to have a real problem to solve. Take us back to when that happened. Take us back to when you realized there was a problem. It made sense to solve that problem. And just how you got started. We have a lot of startup.

golf people that watch this podcast and that kind of that moment, that problem moment I think is so key for people. Take us back two years to how that came to be. That I came three years ago. It was around COVID time, you know, that good time, old time in COVID. I've been asked to software companies from the US and Canada to have and make an analysis to their systems for the UP market and golf products.

I've been in the business for 15, almost 20 years now. And with the experience I had, I was being asked to make an analysis of their systems. And what I found out is the system itself is good, but they don't talk to each other. They always focus on their own product. And I'm always looking to the customer, in this case, the Golf Course Manager. What does the Golf Course Manager need? They need to have good systems and good systems that talk with each other.

And when I found out with those giants of software companies from the US and Canada, I thought, okay, maybe, maybe I think that will help a lot of companies and also the golf course organization who want to change to more than new systems that are available on the market. And when we validate that problem, we found out that we solved many things for golf courses.

If you want to change your all -one system, it's a big operation. If you have Golfspot in the middle and you connect all the systems out there and one of those systems doesn't work anymore or you think it can be better, then you only need to replace that single system and everything else just continue with running the organization.

If you have Golfspot in the middle, you create an open market so everybody can choose whatever they want to choose instead of what the market is forcing you to choose A or B. A is not the best solution, B is also not the best solution, then you end up with options. And when we validate that, we thought, okay, maybe this is a really problem solver. And apparently it is because after two years we are growing very fast.

Well, that's great. Let's talk about that a little bit. So your customer is the golf course, correct? I just want to make sure. Okay. And where do you sit today in terms of, you know, you can give us a rough estimate of client count, but I think we'd also be interested to know how many different countries you're doing business in. Yeah. So what we find out is that we solve some problem and global problems. So we spoke with

potential customers from Australia, Europe, America, all over the world we spoke. And everybody said the same thing, this is a problem solver. Only my organization is not that big as a startup. So I thought to myself, okay, keep it easy, step by step. So first of all, of course, our home country, the Netherlands. So we thought we should start it with small...

Nine Hole Golf Courses, but we ended up with the big names in the Netherlands. With Bernardus, with the International, all the private courses, all the commercial courses. So even that is surprising us. So we thought, okay, we've been interested, we are interested for the commercial golf courses, but we ended up also with all the private golf courses. So the number of requests was enormous this year. And so the Netherlands, we started.

Then we had a request from the Belgium and the Belgium Federation to solve a problem over there as well. And now we are preparing to Scotland as well. So step by step. Yes, brick by brick, right? Yeah. So Menno, you recently did get funded. That's my understanding, which is always a it's very exciting. And it's also such a it's such a confirmation.

Right. Hey, what we're doing, we're, you know, we're on the right track and there are people that are, that are interested in us commercially as well as problem solvers talk. And so there's a lot of companies in America today that are trying to get funded. They're trying to close seed rounds. We just had one company recently close a seed round. Talk a little bit about how that comes to be, how hard it is.

How much you have to beg your aunt, you know, and your uncle and whatnot. Talk about that a little bit. Yeah, it is difficult because you're so independent of funding in the beginning. If you have a SaaS model like we have, so we must make a platform. We must invest a lot of money with the developers and you know it's going to work, but you need to have the confirmation of an investor. And we spoke with a lot of investors. If you didn't play golf,

They say the market is too small. I thought the market is small. My market is not the Netherlands. My market is global. Every single golf course operates almost in the same way. Of course, you have some challenges if you go overboard to other countries. But still, my market is 34,000 golf courses worldwide. So my market is big enough, especially if you know that our solution is breakeven after, like, say, 400 golf courses. So...

It is hard to find the right investor that believes in your story and knows the market as well. It went quickly. We had a number of conversations and suddenly, there he was, our hero, a new investor. We were thrilled to get him on board because he is an entrepreneur who has been successful in the SaaS model. He understands that the SaaS model will take years and years to go to that point of breakeven.

But after you reach that, then it's the holy grail, of course. And who was the investor there? Because I didn't catch that name. Who were you mentioning? I don't know if he want to be known in that way. I will not mention his name, but at least we are very happy. He's not a golfer, but he understands the model of SaaS model. So if you are in a startup in golf, you need to have two. You need to have focus on two investors. One investor.

must understand the golf market, then he understands your problem properly, or he need to have a SaaS model company and he understands the logic behind that one. So one of those you need to find out. So your platform, Golfspot, which, and I do think your branding looks great. I think the name is easy to remember. I think you really did hit that really, really well. You obviously, you kind of live off of integrations, right? How many different companies can we connect with?

and ingest their data, et cetera, et cetera. From looking at your website, it looks like you actually, you have many integrations. Maybe a couple that you don't have, you know, when you talk about the world of customer data, you do tend to think of like a meta, right? Or maybe a TikTok or an X, something like that. But,

You do have Golf Genius, you do have Lightspeed, you do have MailChimp. And I think MailChimp was interesting. And of course, then that made me think, I wonder what other communication tools you'll interface with. Talk about how hard it is to convince people to interface with you. Talk about the value of these interfaces. I do think that that's such a core piece of your business. Yeah, that is right. So we have two kinds of integration. We have both.

integrations, golf related, let's put it that way. You must think to federations. Federations need to have time to understand what we do and what we solve. Some federations are very old -fashioned. I try to speak with it in a good way, but they really need to change how they need to work. And golf software companies are really keen...

to work with us because if you're not on the platform, people will not choose you as a potential new software system. So we come out with golf courses a lot and they say, if you don't like this tee sheet, I want to switch as easy as possible because in the end, the market will decide what is good and not good. It's also better for the competition. It keeps you focused as a company, in my opinion. So you're not being worried, hey, my competitor is also on the platform.

Maybe he steals my customer, if you have a good product, they will stay with you. They don't switch that easily customers. So, the golf software companies like Event Software, Tee Sheet and Federation, that's the golf side of the park. And other systems is sales driven. Nowadays, an interaction is not that difficult anymore. So, we build connections within a day or two days, depending on what the customer wants, because in the end, we do it for them.

Go for organizations and not for ourselves. So we started with MailChimp. There are now many, four more coming up because I don't care where you put your data in and how you want to communicate with your customers. If you want to use Spotler or you want to use another mail program, I'm fine. That's just one table of work nowadays because all the connections work in the same way in that sense. What about big CRMs?

HubSpot, Salesforce, things like that. Is there even a need to interface with a big CRM? Talk about that a little. Yeah, of course, a CRM can be in detail a little bit different. We also make an integration with Microsoft Dynamics, for example, for a customer. And so they have a complete workflow in Microsoft Dynamics and a real CRM thing in Microsoft Dynamics. And they give the data to us. And we...

the data again to the other systems they want to use because it can be very big number of money to make an integration on Microsoft Dynamics and we have the integration already with for example, Golf Genius or Lightspeed or whatever. So they use us as like more on data hub, put data in our system, we make sure we connect with the systems you want to use. Understood. So there's a reason why sales.

a hub and a Salesforce and HubSpot will also be integrated on a longer term, I guess. Gotcha. You know, one of the more notable integrations you have really, you have two big ones as it relates to North America. And that would be Lightspeed and Golf Genius. Maybe MailChimp too, actually. But when I noticed Lightspeed on there,

And of course, Lightspeed has some challenges even within the Lightspeed world, right? You know, connecting Lightspeed golf to Lightspeed retail, to Lightspeed restaurant. I assume you probably help there, but is, did you pick Lightspeed because they have strong penetration in the Netherlands? Why Lightspeed? And I'm thinking maybe it's because there was a lot of golf courses you were talking through that are using Lightspeed. different way. Well, Lightspeed knows us and we know each other. Let's put it that way.

Lightspeed asked me can we work together because we want to go in the market, we want to talk with the Federation, they not allow us to enter the market as a commercial party and because we are independent and we only focus again on the customer, on the golf course, we explain that to that Federation and suddenly we enter the market in that Federation. Suddenly Lightspeed has a new market to enter and so we cooperate on that way with each other.

I see. So you're actually solving a problem for Lightspeed. As well. Yeah, for example with the Belgian Federation, they have one system in Belgium that's really closed, but more and more the customers, in that case the Belgian Golf Course, push on connections for the Belgian Federation. But as you know, every Golf Course wants to have a different integration. That's very costable for the...

federation they ask us if we give you your data of the golf organization can you make the connections for them? Of course that's my business. So we're also helping not only the golf course solve a problem but sometimes also the software company itself because they cannot connect with federation or they cannot connect easily with other systems and just give the data to us and focus on your own products that's for Lightspeed making your tee sheet better and that's what we certainly also solve.

I see, I see. Well, so Menno, tell us a little bit about yourself. You mentioned you have been in golf for a while. I always think it's interesting to get the founder story and that type of thing. Tell us a little bit about how you came up through golf. Long, long, long time ago when I was young, I met a girl, of course, and the father bought a golf course and they asked me to pick up the balls on the driving rates.

And suddenly I thought, OK, if I need to pick up the golf balls, I can hit the balls myself as well. And that's why it was in 2000 I entered the golf market and became very, how do you say that? You fell in love with the game. Yeah, the love in the game. You know, the needle in your arm and really being addicted to it, like the most golfers has. And I found my way in the golf industry in 2007. I started with the first job in golf.

And step by step, I became more and more entrepreneur and started companies before what I sold or step out like Zest Golf. I started that in 2018 as a channel manager in the golf industry. Zest Golf? Yeah. Zest, okay, gotcha. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Founding that one, sold my shares and then I started in that Golfspot in 2023, 22, something like that.

So I'm still playing golf. That's my goal. Told you before, Mike, I want to have 365 customers so I can play every single customer every day. And then I'm more than happy. I'm more than happy. It's, you know, the Zest Golf thing. I didn't know that. So I appreciate you sharing it. It's interesting because that business also really relies on integrations, right? And, and, yeah, so it's the same as one is three times on us customer data. So it was also logic for me to stay in the same approach.

Because I saw in that time it says, okay, it's strange that it's in the time 2018 when we started it, people still making phone calls or sending emails or faxes to confirm the booking instead of making bookings online independent of the tissue you use. So yeah, it's almost the same. It's very same solution. I thought that's strange. Why don't we start it? And same here with Gozal. Strange, right? Isn't there? Let's start it.

And then you need a little bit of luck. And so you mentioned that you're trying to break into Scotland. I would assume that means you're going to talk to people like Carr Golf, you're going to talk to BRS, maybe Albatross, things like that. Is there a nugget in Scotland that makes you feel like you can get a foothold? It's the home of golf, you know. I think we need to be there. And I think we solve something as well.

The systems out there doing what they're doing and I think they need to have an open market as well. I really believe in open markets. Let everybody choose whatever they choose. Even in Scotland you have only three choices, maybe four, and that's it. I think they can do better, and I need to be better. And that's why I think it's a beautiful market to enter and to be working in the home of golf. It has three times more golf course than the Netherlands.

I love St Andrews, I love Scotland. Got it. Okay. Now in North America, and maybe that's limiting, and I honestly don't know if this company goes outside of North America, but certainly there's another similar company, Metolius. Are you familiar with Metolius based out of the United States? Not yet. Not yet? No. Okay. Now Metolius is, I would say not exactly as customer oriented as you are.

They are also dabbling in rounds and revenue and things like that. But it is interesting that we're starting to see more of these companies come on more of these companies that are saying the data is important. And if I can help bring the data together, but then also easily consumable, I'll really have something right. And talk about how important you think it is to make the data usable and to make the data digestible.

That's everything, right? Let's go 20 years back. You had a golf course, you had 800 members, you know your members, everybody knows each other. If I have 800 members, the manager most of the time was one of those members. And they say, it's going great because we have 800 members, everybody's happy and that's it. But they don't look to data, it's just a gut feeling, right? I think it's going to be great and it will be.

But nowadays you have your tools in the software and you have your data. So why don't you manage all your decisions based on that data? I spoke with managers here in the Netherlands. They say, okay, I don't want to have discussions with my members because members say it's always crowded. I cannot book because always full. And if you say, no, it's full between 10 o 'clock and one o 'clock in the afternoon, that's, I agree, that's full, but that's only 40% of the time.

The other 60% you still can book your tea time. End of discussion. Sometimes that helps you to clarify your decisions. I think that will be important because at least here in Europe it's going to be changing. It's not only 100% revenue of your members, it's also for your guest players and that needs to be in balance. That's always a struggle for golf managers.

Do I support more my visitors because I earn a lot of money with them or do I support my members because they have an annual revenue for me? So there's always imbalance and I think data in that sense can help them big times. Even private courses. Private courses we have in the Netherlands as well and they say, okay, we have now 1200 members but maybe we can handle 1500 members as the golf course is not crowded or we can push more on the late afternoon. Hey, why don't we...

except 200 more new private members. Certainly. So every decision can be based on that. So yeah, it is important and more. Yes. Now, you did mention early on, there is a another product, if you will, and that's membership management. It looked to me in looking at your your website, it looked to me like, you're somewhat involved with monthly billing or maybe annual billing.

Is that part of your revenue model that you're involved with the collection of dues? Talk a little bit about your membership. No, no. In the beginning, we were only on data hub. And then they told me, where do I put my membership management in? Because nobody was doing that in the golf market, only the membership management. You have your license for tee sheet, you have golf tournaments, and then who's doing the membership management? Because it's complex area.

because you have weekly membership, monthly membership, you have year round membership, you can pay monthly, you can build yearly, so a lot of options in there as well. And we thought, okay, then we build that as well. We're building that, we're creating orders, as we call it, and that orders we send to accounting systems that run the invoice and sending the invoice and collecting the money. We're not in the money for that sense.

No, first we focus, can we calculate all revenues correctly and giving the data correctly to the account systems before we start sending in force by ourselves. And then, yeah, of course, you have your payments in between. And that can be in review in the end as well. So we're also looking what can we do like sponsor management. We're building a sponsor management tool for the customers as well, especially based.

for subscriptions as well. Like the member app we have, they ask us, it's nice to have the best of breath, but I don't want to have an app for the tee sheet, I have an app for the Federation, I have an app for the Food and Beverage, I have an app for the Golf Genius, why can't we make one single layer on top of all those apps and the member only need to download one app and it's ready for them. So that's our tools that we're building step by step.

And so does the member download a golf spot branded app or is the app branded as the golf course? No, the app is brand as a golf course. And we have a different name for that is the golf dashboard app. And that app we now present to the members, but a lot of golf course assets can we make another layer on top of that, that our mentors also can book the types on other golf courses. Of course we can.

Gotcha. Right. Talk a little bit about the size of your company. Is this a remote company? You're using offshore developers. How are you guys building a golf spot? No, we started to.

I found a development team in the Netherlands here and that is for the first time. I built my other systems globally like in Ukraine or in India, stuff like that. But now finally I have a team nearby me. We have two backend developers, one frontend development designer. That's development team of four. We have a support, somebody who helps call forces to success manager, as we call it. And we just...

making an application for two more employees helping me with the onboarding of new customers. So, one was just hired, we're looking still for one more. And so, we are a pretty small team, it's very effective. And again, I'll just say, step by step. Yeah, I think that that's a... Whenever you can do it with neighbors, it's a big difference maker for sure.

So let's talk expansion. Let's talk North America, United States, et cetera. Is that something you would do tomorrow if given the opportunity? I would think you'd want to get to that big market. Talk about that a little bit. Of course. You are the holy grail, isn't it? You are the big ones. So the big numbers are coming from your side. So yeah, of course, in the end, we have to focus on the goal to go to the US and not America.

But again, we are here for the long term, not the short term. So we want to first, another year, at least another year, to stabilize here with all the customers. So we're still developing features, but we are not on a point that we say, okay, now we are stable, but I have everything in place, not only the system, but also the team. So if we, sales is, now I will tell something strange, sales is not a problem for this startup.

Because if we want, we can start tomorrow with Lightspeed in Canada, we can start with Golf Genius in America. No problem. We will find our way with our partners. I'm sure. So that's not the problem. The problem is can we have the organization that can handle those numbers that you have in North America? For now, no. And that's why we make it step by step. First, another country like Scotland, maybe France or Germany, if we...

Again, stable, that I think, okay, we know the playing field, we know everything, then it's time to go across the water. And then still, it's not going there and we're starting directly because you have always local connections needed to start in. The local connection with the federation, local account system, stuff like that, sometimes the food and beverage systems. But again, I'm assuming that in the next two years we will be starting in the US.

Another big market for us is Australia and New Zealand. It's also a big market, potential market for us. Yes, I agree. That is a big one. You know, one of your integrations is tea control. And I think that that's from the Netherlands as well. I've talked to him once or twice before. How is tea control becoming the tea sheet of choice in your country? Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. They're making also big steps. So I'm independent. I like everybody. Like I said before, so I have no opinion about what's a better tee sheet. I think every tee sheet can handle different things. And Lightspeed or Teecontrol depending on what kind of organization, but Teecontrol in the Netherlands is growing fast, fast, fast. It's a very extended new tee sheet.

who can handle, and I'm surprised by what they built in three years time. It's really impressive what they built. In three years time, I think they built one of the best tee sheets in the world. That's great. And all the years, also with Zest we connected with all kinds of tee sheets. This is the state of the art of technology and tee sheets. On the requirement of the golf courses now, not what...

10 years or 15 years back, but they need now very flexible, very smart build up. And I would think another, you know, another tee sheet that's growing quickly in Europe is Golf Manager. So perhaps you'll integrate with Golf Manager. Tell us, I'm interested in your integrations. Tell us about golf dashboard, because it almost seems like that could be golf spot. But you, you list golf dashboard. Tell us about that a little bit.

Yeah, the goal is that you choose another name because I think it's an independent name also for not members. It will be came out. So goal of the dashboard, what they can do is it doesn't matter what kind of tee sheet you use, you can switch it tomorrow and it's still working is booking tee times, finding friends, book with your friends, stuff like everything that has to do with reservation, booking your burglies, booking your golf sets, whatever you need, it can be handled there.

independent again from tee sheet. We have integration with FedRaisers, so scorecards and handicapping is there. We have a centralized wallet, so you can use that wallet for your driving range or you can use your wallet for your food and beverage or for the shop, doesn't really matter. If the connection is there, you can use that centralized amount of wallet in any system you want. Understood, that makes sense. And you have...

Parrow or Parrow on there. I have not spoken with them, but I followed them a little bit. But I mentioned them because it almost seems like as often as you can, you're going to at least have an integration with two similar companies. So Parrow and Golf Genius, Teecontrol and Lightspeed, right? You're going to kind of cover your bases a little bit, is the expression we use over here. Yeah, at least the customer chose what they want. It's not on me, it's dependent. So I want to have more T -Sheets, I want to have more

Golf events software doesn't really matter. That's saying that Parrow and Golf Genius is not the same. Of course, it's an event software, but it's not the same. Golf Genius is huge. It does everything. It is very good, very rich in functionality. Parrow is much more, but for a community -driven organization, what we have a lot in Europe, it's...

pretty easy to set up your tournament stuff during the year. Again, doesn't really matter for me, whatever you want, we handle both. That's right. That's right. I mean, you really are living that world of Switzerland, right? You're trying to be as independent as you can be. And then give your customer as much choice as you can. And really the underlying item here or underlying theme, and this is really where...

Everyone in golf tends to be on one side of the fence or the other. And that's the open, right? The open platform. Do you believe in open platforms so you can let technologists and consumers essentially go build whatever they want? Or do you believe in closed platforms? And certainly there are some big entities in golf that have closed platforms. But there are more coming that are open.

Yeah, the close ones are the ones that started at least 15 years ago. They are closed because what we do is the best and we don't need anything else. We are the best. You know, that's the statement that they all give. Nowadays, I don't believe that anymore because it became the market, our market, the golf industry became so complex in the different kind of memberships and again, became very complex for an organization. So it isn't possible.

to develop all those things in one system. If you count the number of developers on a system like that, in the Netherlands, they have two, three developers for all functionalities. I already have three developers, only in that small area. Teecontrol has three. Lightspeed has multiple. I know Golf Genius has 50, maybe already 100 developers doing only the tournament module. So, yeah, you can build it.

but maintain it and make innovation on your own, I don't believe that's possible anymore. It's became too complex. I really agree with you on the comment about the innovation. Maybe you can build it, but will you innovate on it for years to come? And that I think becomes limiting. So I would certainly agree with that. Yeah, because even I don't know what can happen in five years time. And then let's go back five years.

Nobody heard from it. Now it's become so important in our life. All those things, it will be there. So then you need to focus on that side again. And maybe five years time something else gonna happen. Those big all -in -one closed systems are not able to handle all those new innovations. I'm not a believer of that. I believe in the best of breed. I believe the product specialists will win and will be in...

better solution for that for everybody. So even for the golf course, if you have an open platform, if you don't like one of those anymore, if you don't like your tee sheet anymore, tomorrow we have another tee sheet running and your data is there and everything runs smoothly. So I think it gives you an open market, give also the customer a better feeling on the choice they make now. It doesn't really matter what you choose now because next year you can choose again. We have customers that started with a point of sales,

after one year, they change already point of sales that will not happen with the close ones. If they use, because then you need to replace everything and that's not going to do that. Yes. Agreed. Agreed. Well, listen, I almost, you know, it's been, it's been great to speak with you. the, the zest golf nugget was a great nugget to get from you. I hope we get to talk to more founders like you, outside of North America, frankly, cause I think that that's a really important,

story to be told. So when, when, as you make progress, send us your press releases will help to amplify your company as best we can. Our approach is tends to not ask for, we don't want money from you guys. We, we would, we want to help amplify you. We want to help your customer, your customers, the golf course, we want to help your customer learn as much as they can about the options that are out there. That's really our mission. So.

Well, it's great to speak with you. Best of luck. Hope you have a awesome summer. And again, thanks for your time, Menno. It's been great. Thanks, Mike. I will appreciate it. Menno Liebregts from GolfSpot on the Tech Caddie.

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